On January 9th, 2019, the Center for New York City Law and the Impact Center for Public Interest Law of New York Law School hosted New Yorkers for Parks for their Open Space Dialogues: Healthy City, Active Places. This installment of the dialogues explored the ways New Yorkers have and want to create opportunities for active recreation and health. The discussion focused on answering questions such as: how parks contribute to different scales of health; what park designs and programming prevent or catalyze active recreation; how parks can balance changing user groups, sports popularity, and informal recreation demand; what are neighborhood knock-on effects for parks with an active recreation and health focus; and where are recreations needs of New Yorkers not being met? Video of the event can be found here.

Lynn Kelly, the Executive Director of New Yorkers for Parks, gave opening remarks and introduced the panelists. Joanna Frank, the President and CEO of the Center for Active Design, discussed the effects of the design and maintenance of parks on public health and perception of government and community. Dionne Grayman and Sheila Barksdale-Gordon, the co-founders of We Run Brownsville, discussed the value of using park space to build a group working to improve community health and perception of their neighborhood. Martin Maher, the Brooklyn Commissioner for NYC Parks, discussed the exciting renovations and additions to parks across Brooklyn, and discussed the importance of adding positive programming and resources to make parks more appealing to the public.

The respondents’ panel was moderated by Jeff Coltin of City & State. Micahel Schnall, the Vice President of Government Relations and Community Investment at New York Road Runners discussed how parks can get “punished” for negative things like crime that occur within the park and that having positive programming invites the community in and in turn pushes negative activity out of parks. Mike Silverman, the Director of Sports of the City Parks Foundation, answered questions about funding and maximizing resources to improve and maintain parks. Paulette Spencer, a Community-Engagement – Policy Analyst with the Bronx Community Health Network, discussed how programs designed to improve health increased the use of parks. All seven panelists took audience questions.

To view the video of this event, please click below. The next Open Space Dialogues event will be on February 20, 2019, at New York Law School.